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MHC Welcomes Its Newest Students

Posted: September 18, 2006

The 570 first-year students entering Mount Holyoke this fall bring to the
College an impressive array of backgrounds, experiences, cultures, and ambitions.
Culled from the largest applicant pool in the College's history, at 3,065 applicants,
members of the class of 2010 have competed in luge, speed skating, and canoeing;
created a driverless car; interned with actor John Cleese; fought for Tibetan
human rights; invented a fire prevention system; produced a documentary on
Venezuela; run an art gallery of the works of quadriplegics; and traveled to
Africa to witness a Rwandan tribunal. Meet
some of them...

The numbers speak for themselves. As Diane Anci, dean of admission, recounted
at the President's Welcome for New Students and Families during orientation:
421 incoming students were involved in the performing arts; 366 participated
in athletic programs; 246 were part of religious and cultural activities; 110
took part in political activities; 461 were employed; and 425 did community
service work.

These new students have already embraced Mount Holyoke's mission of producing
women who make a difference in the world, and their backgrounds reinforce the
College's commitment to creating a diverse, international community: 16 percent
of the new students come from other countries, and 23 percent are of African
American, Latina, Asian American, or Native American descent. They represent
37 different countries, including Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Mongolia, South Korea,
Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe, and 38 states.

Thirty-one percent hail from New England; 18 percent from the Middle Atlantic
states; 17 percent from the West Coast; 12 percent from the South; and 6 percent
come from the central part of the country. They attended 474 different high
schools--62 percent public, 27 percent private, and 11 percent parochial.

"We welcome the Class of 2010," President Joanne V. Creighton said. "Assembled
from the largest, most impressive pool of applicants in the College's history,
we know these women will do great things at Mount Holyoke, and we, in turn,
will do everything we can to prepare them to do even greater things in the
world."

Also joining the student body this year are 58 Frances Perkins Scholars, or
women of nontraditional age, and 31 transfer students from other colleges.